Sabrina (Azores)
Coordinates: 37 ° 50 ′ 30 " N , 25 ° 54 ′ 58" W.
The Azores -Insel Sabrina was an island in 1811 near the island of São Miguel before the congregation Ginetes a submarine volcano as a result of the outbreak originated, but a few months later sank.
history
The island was formed in June / July 1811 by eruptions during an undersea volcanic eruption near the municipality of Ginetes on the island of São Miguel. Just a few months later, however, she was gone again. Such processes were rarely documented and even less analyzed up to this point. This time, however, the British ship's captain S. Tillard was present, who not only attended individual stages in the formation of this island, but also explored the island and named it Sabrina after his ship. Most importantly, he published an eyewitness account in the scientific journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London . Furthermore, in his book on the geological processes of the island of São Miguel, John Webster published extracts from Tillard's report as well as letters and reports from several of Tillard's acquaintances, who were also present at the eruption and who described it in their own words.
Eyewitness report
According to Tillard, the eruption began on June 10, 1811 off the island of São Miguel; on the 12th he passed the spot with his ship, the HM Sabrina. The occasional columns of smoke on the horizon made him think of a sea battle. Then he remembered hearing about a volcanic eruption in the area earlier this year. The suspicion was confirmed when it docked in the street of Ponta del Gada. On June 14th In the company of the Consul General of the Azores, he watched the volcanic eruption from a cliff on the island of São Miguel.
Tillard described circular clouds that circled over the sea like a horizontal wheel, interrupted by sudden columns of ash. Together these phenomena combined to form images of ostrich feathers and weeping willows interspersed with lightning and water spouts. The eruptions were accompanied by the noise of cannons and tremors, one of which brought down part of the cliff where Tillard and his entourage were picnicking. After they had recovered from the initial horror, however, they continued their picnic at a greater distance from the cliff.
The outbreak dragged on for a few days, on June 16. he expressed himself in an apparently continuous flash of flame. On another visit on July 4th, an island protruding about eighty yards from the sea in a shape resembling an amphitheater had formed. Although she still smoked in places, Tillard decided to explore the island. Since the surf of the island was very steep, he and two of his officers got ashore with difficulty. They found a narrow beach of black ash that took 12 minutes to walk around. Tillard estimated the size of the island to be less than a mile circumference. The island itself was mostly too steep or too hot to climb the walls. The crater was filled with boiling water and emptied into the sea via a small river. The hot water, as well as possibly poisons produced by the outbreak, were likely responsible for the mass deaths of fish that washed ashore in the area at the time of the outbreak.
On a cliff they made it with difficulty to a platform. There they hoisted the Union Jack , the British flag, named the island Sabrina and left a description of how the island was formed in a bottle.
The emergence of islands as a political issue
This episode might have had serious political consequences: by hoisting the British flag, Tillard claimed the island for the British Kingdom. However, the Azores belonged to Portugal. By 1811, Great Britain and Portugal were allies, and Portugal aided Great Britain in the economic blockade - the continental blockade that Napoleon had imposed on the British Isles.
That is why it was a stroke of luck that the island had already sunk again when it was supposed to be measured. Perhaps that is why John Webster (1793–1850) claimed the island was too steep and too hot to walk properly. He made an excerpt from Tillard's report, but left out the sentence about the conquest and the section on the flag.
Webster quotes another eyewitness as saying that some people tried to land. The island would have been too hot and people would have left the island immediately. However, in his book, Webster made a drawing of the island on which the flag can be seen.
Eyewitness accounts in science and public discussion
Apart from the political dimension, the description also aroused scientific interest. Webster's interest in the island resulted primarily from his scientific focus on the geology of the island of São Miguel. He drew his information from eyewitness accounts who observed and described the phenomenon from the perspective of non-scientists. Scientific journals gave the eyewitnesses the opportunity to expand on the state of scientific knowledge, even though they were not considered scientists.
Alexander von Humboldt went one step further. He discussed the formation of the island in connection with volcanism and earthquakes in the Kosmos lectures in Berlin in 1827/28, both in the university lecture and in the public lectures at the Sing-Akademie . Thereby he brought the scientific knowledge of his time closer to the interested general public and invited them to participate in the developments. In his discussion he went beyond the simple description of the events and put them in connection with other seismic activities that were recorded in the wider area from 1811 to 1813, e. B. The destruction of the city of Caracas by an earthquake and the eruption of the St. Vincent volcano .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Tillard, S. (1812) “A Narrative of the Eruption of a Volcano in the Sea off the Island of St. Michael” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 102: pp. 152-158. Freely accessible at jstor
- ^ Webster, J. (1822), Description of the Island of St. Michael, comprising an account of its Geological Structure; with Remarks on the Other Azores or Western Islands. Boston: RP & C. Williams: 139–152 on Google Books
- ^ Webster, J. (1822), Description of the Island of St. Michael, comprising an account of its Geological Structure; with Remarks on the Other Azores or Western Islands. Boston: RP & C. Williams: 143-147. On google books
- ^ Webster, J. (1822), Description of the Island of St. Michael, comprising an account of its Geological Structure; with Remarks on the Other Azores or Western Islands. Boston: RP & C. Williams: between 146-147. On google books
- ↑ 8 transcripts have been preserved from the university lecture and 2 from the public lecture. They are digitized in the German text archive and freely available. http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/kosmos/codingdavinci ; The culture hackathon codingdavinci project "Exploring The Hidden Kosmos" discusses Tillard's descriptions in the context of the lectures and provides a digital update of the impressions http://humboldt-kosmos.oklab-potsdam.de/
- ↑ He had continued and expanded this discussion in his Kosmos books, e.g. B. Humboldt, A. from: Kosmos. Draft of a physical description of the world. Vol. 4. Stuttgart et al., 1858: 496. In the German text archive .